Arkane PREY - Arkane's immersive coffee cup transformation sim - now with Mooncrash roguelike mode DLC

[Ash]

MUH SYSTEM SHOCK LOYALTY ITS THE BEST THE REST ARE SHIT GIVE ME KOOL KREDITS AND BROFISTS

Bioshock was breddy gud for what it was, although actually I don't think I've played 2.

Yet another nincompoop that needs educating.

Start here.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Bioshock was breddy gud for what it was

oh dear

 

[MuscleSpark]

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Bioshock.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, I really just don't give a flying fuck about your muh classics virtue-signaling in this particular case, especially coming from ratos who don't like Underrail because muh no instant fast-travel everywhere. Bioshock certainly suffered from decline, but I could produce an identical list for almost every game you like suffering from a mild case of decline.

Also, that video was made to mock Bioshock Infinite, and

 

[agentorange]

MUH SYSTEM SHOCK LOYALTY ITS THE BEST THE REST ARE SHIT GIVE ME KOOL KREDITS AND BROFISTS

Bioshock was breddy gud for what it was, although actually I don't think I've played 2.

2 is substantially better than 1. I didn't care for 1 but had a surprisingly good time with 2. One reason being they improved the combat in just about every way it needed to be improved, including giving the player the ability to use plasmids in one hand and a gun in the other and having more enemy variety.

 

[Multidirectional]

Dunno about classics virtue signaling. I played Bioshock before I even knew about System Shock and I thought it was boring crap despite thinking it was cool for first hour or two. Played System Shock 2 couple years later and loved it.

 

[Blaine]

Dunno about classics virtue signaling. I played Bioshock before I even knew about System Shock and I thought it was boring crap despite thinking it was cool for first hour or two. Played System Shock 2 couple years later and loved it.

It's been a decade since I've played Bioshock, so long that Steam has no information on my time played. I was more forgiving of decline during The Great Drought; I'll give Bioshock another try to see what I think.

What I won't do is be lectured to, because I don't need a lecture on decline. I could make a list longer than my computer room is wide detailing all the ways in which New Vegas is decline, for example, yet we all love it anyway.

What's important is to acknowledge decline for what it is instead of trying to pretend it's incline, which is heresy. I do and always have acknowledged that Bioshock is decline (though not publicly since I've never discussed it on the Codex), and so is Prey. I'm not gonna waste time quibbling over the exact percentage of decline.

 

[Blaine]

Can someone explain to me why turrets break for no reason? Does the Nightmare just destroy everything on the stage within the first five seconds of you setting foot in the level before anything even loads?

Christ, that shit is useless. Fucking Hell.

 

[RoSoDude]

Dunno about classics virtue signaling. I played Bioshock before I even knew about System Shock and I thought it was boring crap despite thinking it was cool for first hour or two. Played System Shock 2 couple years later and loved it.

We're the exact same in this regard. People told me I'd love Bioshock because I liked Deus Ex and (at the time) Dishonored, and I found myself bored to tears by it. Probably made me ignore the System Shock games for longer than I should have, since SS2 is now my second favorite game.

 

[RoSoDude]

Can someone explain to me why turrets break for no reason? Does the Nightmare just destroy everything on the stage within the first five seconds of you setting foot in the level before anything even loads?

Christ, that shit is useless. Fucking Hell.

I did a few google searches and no one seems to really know. Some say it happens behind the scenes to simulate them being broken by Typhon when you weren't there. Others say it might be a balancing factor, as if turrets needed it (especially after you waste Spare Parts to fortify them...). Another thought is that they're broken down to prevent them fighting newly spawned in Typhon before you've even seen them (e.g. the Weaver that spawns in the Lobby when you return to it later). I guess Arkane would rather that you start from scratch when you first see a new enemy encounter, and also give the impression that these creatures have been here for a while, not spawned in just as you loaded the map.

 

[Ash]

Makes sense to me if it's for balancing purposes. Turrets that you can take command of are always OP as hell.

 

[agentorange]

I assumed it was a way to suggest the Typhon moving through an area even while you are not there.

 

[MuscleSpark]

Prove me wrong.

 

[Blaine]

Makes sense to me if it's for balancing purposes. Turrets that you can take command of are always OP as hell.

Have you actually played this game? It would be more effective to pick up the turret and throw it at them.

It's frankly an insult that they're randomly destroyed, further devaluing the already lackluster Repair skill. Voltaic Phantoms also love to spawn near electric junctions you've already repaired, somewhat defeating the point of repairing them, since at that rate you might as well just shoot them with a single cumball whenever you pass by. The parts you save by choosing not to repair near-useless things can be recycled and turned into much more useful ammunition... not that you should need to min-max materials that hard if you have enough brain cells to breathe unassisted. Anyway, turrets supposedly serve as a deturret for players who go the filthy alien route because they'll target you if you have Typhon neuromods installed. Given my experiences with Technopaths controlling turrets, they aren't much of a deturret.

That's about right, but it's a classic example of data massage, because rock bottom is way below that. Case in point: Bioshock Infinite.

For example, if you were to compare the average IQs of only whites and Asians, you could make the gulf appear to be quite large. If you added niggers to the graph, however, suddenly the difference between whites and Asians would appear negligible.

Speaking of IQ,

I hunger for knowledge *tibs bedora*

 

[Lazing Dirk]

That's about right, but it's a classic example of data massage, because rock bottom is way below that. Case in point: Bioshock Infinite.

For example, if you were to compare the average IQs of only whites and Asians, you could make the gulf appear to be quite large. If you added niggers to the graph, however, suddenly the difference between whites and Asians would appear negligible.

Graphics cards comparisons seem to have the best versions of this.

 

[Ash]

That's about right, but it's a classic example of data massage, because rock bottom is way below that. Case in point: Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock is close to the bottom, it just provides the illusion of sophistication and quality. A fair number of gameplay choices, all of them mostly ultimately meaningless and it and the highly accessible nature of it all distracts the uninitiated player from the crap core gameplay. Good art direction disguising bland level design. The interesting setting and atmosphere further adds confusion among those lacking standards. The classical themes and philosophy must mean it's a highly sophisticated, high-brow game right?

A sheep in wolves clothing. The sheep being the core AND cumulative design, and the wolves clothing being the set dressing that tricks so many of the riff raff. The game could have been a masterpiece but the devs were intent on selling out.

Infinite is also shit, but it's not pretending this time, and its cumulative design is more harmonious even if more simpler and linear than ever.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I've actually been replaying Bioshock for the first time in a decade to try and scratch the Shock itch, and I have to say, it's pretty bad. It plays like a boring, generic shooter with almost no systems outside of shooting guys with guns and shooting guys with lightning. The plasmids look cool, but are for the most part useless. The Big Daddy fights are an exercise in tedium on Hard, since they one-shot you with their rivet gun, and the fights just devolve into a lemming rush over and over from the nearest vita chamber (no fail states here!). The story is also absolute fucking garbage. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief about the construction of Rapture, because it's a cool enough idea (and the art design is the one area of the game that is pretty consistently excellent), but the characters and dialogue are some of the most hackneyed and cliched pseudo-intellectual tripe I've had to sit through. It's akin to having a 20 year old humanities student explain why objectivism is bad; even if you agree with the precept, it's a grating experience. I'm in Olympus Heights and I'm going to try and power through and possibly play 2 since I'm starved for Shock games and the art is pretty, but don't let anyone fool you; Bioshock is a massive decline from both SS2 and Prey.

 

[Blaine]

Ash Too much subjectivity, not enough specificity, and way too much rhetoric.

Example: The historical themes and philosophy must mean New Vegas is a highly sophisticated, high-brow game right? I mean, if you disagree, well then heh, clearly you're an easily-fooled simpleton. Watch as I masterfully craft the framework of this discussion so that it's impossible for you to disagree with me without looking stupid.

No, the themes of any game don't necessarily make it sophisticated or high-brow. It's all in the execution, but you're not being specific beyond trashing fairly broad categories, and you're arguing with someone who hasn't played BioShock in over a decade.

Virtually all that I remember is not hating it. Maybe you're right, but I really suggest you take your crusade to a thread where it actually matters, rather than attacking the genesis of a franchise that we all know and agree is a lost cause already. Go on, Infinitron is waiting to defend any number of shitty Kickstarted shovelware titles. You need to be more specific, though.

Also, you should pile on more vitriol, in my opinion. I don't feel incensed enough. When attacking agents of the decline, you really need to make it feel personal.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Oh, and if you all want a laugh, check out the "Director Commentaries" that are included in the Remastered edition. It's Geoff Keighley interviewing Ken Levine and it is alternatingly some of the most sycophantic and self-aggrandizing shit I have ever seen.

 

[Blaine]

Geoff Keighley

Oh... oh, dear....

Obligatory:

 

[Ash]

Blaine Just so it's clear, you're not one of the riff raff. You may still like the game on some level, that's fine. It's the people that declare it as a masterpiece of the medium that are the simpletons, when objectively it's a miserable failure of a game and elements of its design runs contradictory to one another in a very fundamental way.

 

[Blaine]

Some context is important: I played pretty much every classic shooter (Duke Nukem 3D, Doom/II, Wolfenstein 3D, Blake Stone, and RPG hybrids like Deus Ex and SS/2) around the time they were released, but the decline got going in the early 2000s, and I basically blamed shooters for it. For years, I refused to play any shooters, and played strictly RPGs, adventure games, and strategy games. Only Half-Life 2 convinced me to try shooters again, and I didn't buy it until May 2007 (the same day my Steam account was created).

So, the fact that I hadn't played shooters in a dog's age might have had something to do with what I thought of BioShock. It at least had more to it than collecting guns and shooting things, which certainly is more than can be said for many shooters. This was the Gears of War era, after all.

 

[ciox]

Bioshock mostly fails to create the pleasant "cozy" feeling of being in an isolated well-defined world like you get in Shock games, because of its over-reliance on scripted sequences to move the story forward, and extreme control exerted over the player's free movement where they disable your jump button / slow you down / hide your weapons / block you with invisible walls whenever they feel like it, makes it feel like an asset tour rather than a comfy world to learn about and spread your wings in.
Don't get me started on BS2's band-aids over the systems of BS1, the realtime hacking and research do nothing to solve the main problem, that both of those actions are perfunctory and build-agnostic wastes of time sitting in the way of a reward.

 

[SharkClub]

BioShock was mediocre when it came out and it's mediocre now. I remember playing it back in like 2008 or 2009 (it came out in like mid 2007 or something right, so probably a bit late) and really, really disliking it, thought it was boring as fuck and went back to playing whatever undoubtedly better game I was playing at the time.

I actually sat down and gave it a full proper playthrough 10ish months ago (according to Steam) and I didn't hate it but it wasn't particularly good either. Overall it was just a mediocre/average at best experience. Dumbed down shock game mechanics, ripped off SS2 story beats, bullet sponge enemies, pitifully dumb "moral choices" (gonna pull the numbers out of my ass here but it basically boiled down to "kill the girls for 100adam + bad ending" or "save her for 95adam + random gifts/upgrades + the good ending + by the end of the game you'd still have enough adam for every single useful upgrade", yeah really massaged my grey matter with such a difficult moral choice).

After finishing it I had no desire to pursue the rest of the series whatsoever, even while people were telling me BioShock 2 is actually good. I just don't care for it at all. The series has just been flawed since the fucking start because it tries to recreate some of the things from the System Shock series but with a heavy coat of decline paint. System Shock 2 but for lobotomized console gamers who can't handle immersive sims, the people who rave about it and give it 10/10 reviews and think it's the deepest, most philosophical video game ever made. I can't even imagine how fucking bad BioShock Infinite must be if there are people that actually loved BioShock 1 that don't like that game.

I rather liked Prey, though. It has some issues but it's far better than BioShock 1 ever was, in both general gameplay and as a successor to old immersive sims. It's not totally consistent at reaching the heights of the genre but it does the job every so often and doesn't ever go down to the lows of BioShock.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, well, be sad. Be very sad, because that tiny handful of "immersive sims" is probably all we're ever going to get.